8 Poor Habits for Mental Health

26 Sep 8 Poor Habits for Mental Health

You already know how living on pizza and other junk foods can put your physical health at risk. Bad eating habits can increase your risks of serious health problems. Just as these diet mistakes can cause problems to your physical well-being, there are also bad habits that can harm your mental health. These wrongdoings can heighten your risk of depression or lead you to feel more anxious, which leads to an unhappy and unhealthy life.

Below are 8 bad habits that can wear your mental health down:

1. Being a perfectionist

While it’s great that you always strive for greatness, seeking perfection all the time can eventually challenge your efforts. Perfectionism can either be positive or negative. It’s the former if you’re setting realistic objectives, letting go of failures and moving forward, looking at errors as chances for further development, making sure that stress and anxiety are controlled, and enjoying the process of it all as part of the struggle. Doing so makes success in the end even sweeter.

On the other hand, there’s also negative perfectionism. This is when you set standards that are way too unrealistic, feel discontent easily, pre-occupied with failures or rejections, and perceiving mistakes as proof of disgrace. Studies have shown that negative perfectionism leads to sorrow, fear of committing errors, discord, indecision, and apprehension about judgment from other people.

2. Poor Posture

Sitting the right way has been proven to decrease the symptoms of depression. Numerous other studies also show that proper posture can improve self-esteem and one’s frame of mind. What’s more is that recent studies also show that simply sitting up straight boosts positive mindset, decreases exhaustion, and reduces self-focus in those individuals suffering from mild to moderate depression.

3. Feeling guilt

People who possess the poor habit of guilt are those who usually make predicaments a bigger deal than they really are; those who claim responsibility for making or deciding on problems that had little or nothing to do with them; those who think themselves as wicked for doing minor wrongdoings; and those who refuse to absolve themselves.

4. Lack of physical activity

An inactive lifestyle is not only bad for your body; it is also not great for your mental well-being. Working out on a regular basis could alleviate depression by secreting endorphins and other feel-good chemicals, which represses the chemicals in the immune system that can aggravate depression.

When you exercise, you also augment your body temperature, which produces a soothing outcome. Another benefit of regular exercising is you tend to improve your self-esteem while having a distraction to forget your personal troubles.

5. You think you’re a failure

Everyone invites negative thoughts now and then, the same way that everyone feels he is a failure when a goal is not achieved. However, cultivating these thoughts continuously can generate a failure mindset, which can get in the way with your capacity and potential to accomplish something.

Constant thoughts on mistakes and failures and harboring feelings of hopelessness can exact serious harm on one’s mental health, contributing to anxiety and depression. Negative thinking puts you off from setting goals, weakens the value of your natural talents and skills, and places the focus on your blunders. With these negativities circling your mind all day constantly, there’s little to no chance of making any significant progress, which cements your belief of yourself as a failure.

6. Excessive use of social media

Excessive use of social media can lead to anxiety and reduce confidence in teens, according to a research. Adults are not an exception from the potential mental health issues that social media overuse can bring. Being on social media constantly can lead to feelings of inadequacy and jealousy from comparing themselves to others. Social media use can also generate feelings of loneliness. Given this, social media use is linked to increased risks of depression and anxiety.

7. Phone dependence

While having a smartphone can be rewarding with all its convenience and fun apps, being constantly glued to it is another story. Some mental health experts believe that using smartphone can lead to a kind of addiction with users instinctively checking for updates and notifications. The rise of smartphone use and social media has also led other anxiety issues such as “fear of missing out”, which causes people to check their device all the time. Overuse of smartphone has the potential of aggravating depression, chronic stress, and low confidence.

8. Poor sleeping habits

Your brain only recovers and rests when you sleep. When you do, it gets restored, ready to take on another day. Compromising quality of sleep, however, is bad for your mental wellness. Losing sleep for 1-2 nights results to weakness, irritability, and inability to concentrate. But consistently sleeping poorly can cause serious harm to your mental health.

A study shows that people who suffer from mental issues have the tendency to sleep insufficiently. As a matter of fact 60-90 percent of people with depression also struggle with insomnia.

Presently, researchers believe that poor sleep can contribute to the development of mental issues. Consequently, addressing a sleep disorder can help lessen mental health symptoms.

You have poor sleep habits if: you’re sleep deprived; you drink caffeine late at night; you engage in stressful circumstances prior your bedtime; and you use gadgets before you go to sleep.